A question about touchscreen you probably haven't heard before (CF-18)

Hi, I'm a new owner of a well used CF-18. I've never had a touchscreen PC before, or a toughbook. I'm seriously impressed.

Anyway, what I want to know is... Is the touchscreen itself an actual plastic film on the outside of the glass panel in front of the LCD?

The reason I'm asking is that I just bought one from fleabay sold as "without touchscreen". Its an Ozzie CF-18DHB22KA, so it would have had a touchscreen originally.

The touchscreen isn't working at all, and I have noticed that it looks like there is some residue of a 0.5mm or so plastic film at the very edge of the glass, where it meets the alloy surround. It looks like someone has cut round it with a knife (they did a good job too). So is this whats left of my touchscreen? If so, where do I go from here?

Cheers
Stu.

 

The plastic film you may be referring to is the scratch guard, which comes installed on each Panasonic Toughbook, and which protects the LCD display from blemishing as a result of the digitizer stylus as well as both touch-screen and general use. There are many components within the LCD which allow the touch-screen to function, but they are indeed physically layered over the display. The unit may have been sold without touch-screen as the components may be defective and in need of repair, the touch-screen feature may be disabled in the BIOS, or the CF-18 may lack the necessary drivers for it to function (unless you had installed these yourself).

 

Stumo.... First... Welcome to the forum! As the prior post states... That is the film of the Touchscreen protector on top of the touchscreen. Leave it on unless it is so badly scratched it looks bad or you can't see the screen well. The touchscreen itself is a thin touch sensitive layer that is suspended in front of the LCD. It may actually be working but needs to either be enabled or have the proper driver installed. So....

Second... The market has been flooded with those Aussie CF-18s. Generally the word is that they have pretty good screens, keyboards and touchpads but the rest is pretty much raged but working. They also ship the CF-18 with the incorrect Operating System (XP Tablet I believe when it should have been XP Pro) and the drivers have either not been installed or at least not correctly installed.

So.... What to do....

1. Read the stickies at the top of the forum. They show the legit sites where the drivers can be found.
2. Look in the BIOS to see if the touchscreen has been enabled.
3. You will most likely need to reformat the whole hard drive as this is really the only way to know that it has been done correctly and that you will then have (hopefully) a 100% working Toughbook
If you do a little searching you will find several threads relating to the Aussie CF-18s... There are two major ones but one with tons of posts in it. It shows EXACTLY how to reformat your drive as well as the drivers needed and the order they should be installed.

You will need an external USB CD or DVD drive to install the OS. Any XP Pro installation disk can be used but you will need to use the COA off the bottom of your CF-18.

Of course you have a whole community here ready to help if you have any problems anywhere along the way.

Now... GO fix that Toughbook!

 

Thanks for the replys and info. I guess I just wanted to check I wasn't totally wasting my time with a physically damaged touchscreen, before re-installing everything.

Looks like I have some reading to do, then some careful installing.

Thanks again, I will post back one day with the results.

 

Ok now I have done a full XP Pro SP3 clean install, and followed exactly the installation of drivers and apps in this thread...

And still no touchscreen.

I'm sure there is something happening though, becasue the touch pad seems very unresponsive when the touch screen is enabled in the BIOS. When I disable the touch screen, the touch pad is working how I would expect. So assuming they are both connected on the same input, which the drivers would suggest, then the touchscreen must be sending something out, just not the right thing.

Is there anything else I can try?

 

can you post a photo??

 

Did you try to calibrate
Are you pushing hard enough against the screen with the stylus


Alex

 

I suspect based on your original post that someone did in fact cut away the touchscreen on this unit. If it were just the screen protector that was removed it would have been easily peeled off and no cut edge would be visible.

 

something else, too -

There are TWO types of screens. Touch and digitizer. Touch works with finger or dumb stylus, digitizer does NOTHING without the 'special' stylus. Check and see that you don't have the digitizer. There is a link here somewhere for the TB configurator, that will help you break down your model number. If it is a digitizer, search "wacom penabled" that will get you more info...

-Shawn

 

Attached the photo, hopefully you can see the plastic layer that looks like it has been cut away all round the very edge of the screen.

 

Based on your picture and given that it was sold without touchscreen I would say your TS has been "surgically removed" it probably had been cracked and the seller simply cut it away.

 

well.....

you could take the face apart, and see if it's still connected. Definately perplexing, though. I think I saw a replacement ts on ebay yesterday for 140.

-Shawn

 

I have taken the screen apart, and the ribbon cable and module are both there for the TS. But I can't see exactly where the ribbon cable for the TS goes to at the glass panel - it is obscured by the front bezel. I couldn't get the glass panel out from the front bezel, without what I consider too much force. Is it glued in there or what?

 

If the touchscreen is still there, there should be some kind of play between the touchscreen surface and the glass plate. Kind of cushion feel..... If its gone, the glass plate is just hard. Like the digitizer version screen.

An Ebay seller in aus is selling a bezel with touchscreen at the moment. I think the seller is watching this forum, cause the replacement ts pops up every time someone has cf-18 ts problems over here...

 

Thanks, this is the info I was after, since I don't have a working one, or have ever seen a working one. There is no play on mine, it is basically a hard glossy glass plate.

Do you have a link or item number for that one on the bay? - I can't seem to find it myself.

 

Its item no. 370234756936. I got the other one...

 

Ok thanks (I didn't have "Include store inventory" set), I guess that means it is a good price then?

Hmmm, the whole CF-18 ("without touchscreen") was only AUD$306, so this touchscreen is going to cost half as much again! Maybe I will just wait it out.

The laptop is for my 3yo sons birthday next month, and I think a USB mouse would be fine for now, but obviously a touchscreen would be pretty cool for him too (but maybe not at $150 each ).

 

Yep, I agree. Its not cheap at all. I live in Europe so change I'll find a cheaper one locally is next to zero. I get paid in Euro's so that compensates al little at the moment....

I use the CF-18 as my main outdoor computer and found it really a less usable computer without the touchscreen... For a kid? No, just leave it like it is. I found out the touchscreen is the most sensitive part of the whole cf-18. It could be gone in no-time... No kids are touching my computer..

 

Another possibility I failed to consider at first is that perhaps the useful life of the touchscreen may have expired.

 

I can't really tell from the photo posted but was the touchscreen cut out of the Toughbook? There is a huge difference between "Selling: CF-18, no touchscreen" and "CF-18 with touchscreen hacked out with Dremel tool."

I would still go back to the seller or replace the touchscreen with clear plastic at the very least. You DO NOT want to give this Toughbook to a 3 year old if the touchscreen has been cut out of the laptop.

 

Yeah I agree, if it was just the bare LCD exposed like in a normal laptop, but in this case there is still the hard glass/plastic panel in front of the LCD. The cut away part looks to be about a 0.5mm thick film that may or may not have been a coating/film right over the hard glass panel, and may or may not have been the actual touchscreen "surface".

Unfortunately that photo is as good as I can get. I think I really need to look at a proper one before I spend any more money. But I'm happy so far with mibru's comments about it being a slight cushion feel on the touchscreen, which leads me to beleive that cut away surface was the actual touchscreen surface, since mine is hard like glass.

 

If something was cut away.... And you still have an LCD... That's it.

You can go the cheap route... Go buy an 8X10 picture frame from the five&dime and pull out the clear plastic, cut to shape and install. That is your cheapest route and way to make it safe. Of course you won't have touchscreen functionality.... But you will be able to use it.

 

Okay, I just received the replacement bezel with touchscreen from Australia and its not good at all! Touchscreen looks good but is well used. Very nasty; there is a peace broken of the bezel next to the stylus holder...

I contacted the seller for a solution, but till this time I can not recommend this item at all.

Regards,

Michiel

 

Thanks for this info. I have been thinking about getting that one, but now I am really put off. I would expect prices of parts such as these to start tumbling now with all the cheap ozzie CF-18s flooding the market.

I would rather spend a few hundred and get a whole TB (even if it isn't totally complete), rather than spend $150 and only get a well used bare touchscreen.

 

Yeah, I totally agree. I feel kinda stupid at the moment, cause I also had to pay a lot of customs tax to get it here...

If I ad all together its indeed better to get an grade B CF-18. Especially if I have to send this back to get a replacement which will make a stop-over at customs again!...

New lesson learned: a high price does not mean the item is good...

 

Just to finally wrap this one up...

I got a second CF-18 today, with the touchscreen (and GPS according to the serial number) for AUD$305, it has the TAB key cap missing though.

So I can now say for sure that my original CF-18 has the touchscreen film cut out. HDD swap on both confirms this, as the touchscreen driver install is perfect. Also confirming this is that there is indeed no slight cushion feel on the cut screen one (thanks +rep to mibru for that suggestion). And I can see that the touchscreen film has indeed been cut away around the edge of the bezel.

 

Hey Stumo,

Good news and good price for the TB! Wish I was there. I would have bought ten of them for that price just to satisfy my Toughbook addiction...lol.. Thanks for the +rep too... Another touchscreen + bezel is coming this way. I just received a message from the seller for the costs of shipping the old one back for a refund. Can't wait to have a working touchscreen again! So cool!

 

This might make you cry mibru, but I got a replacement touchscreen from that seller for AUD$50, and it is in pretty good condition too. So now I'm up and running on both TB's now.

ps. My 3yo loves his "puter". He used it for a couple of months just with the touchpad, and it really didn't take him long at all to get used to it. It's amazing how quickly they learn at this age. So I'm kind of glad I didn't go the touchscreen route straight away. I have put Qimo OS on it in a virtual machine. I fully recommend it and the toughbook. An ordinary laptop would have been killed about 10 times over by now! My wife has actually given it a harder time than he has, she has dropped it, and tipped a glass of water over it!

 

hehehehe . . I've only had mine a few weeks and I've dropped it twice already!

 

Can you please tell us just how long the "Useful Life" of a Toughbook touchscreen is? I think I missed that day in class....

 

Originally Posted by Toughbook Exchange
Another possibility I failed to consider at first is that perhaps the useful life of the touchscreen may have expired.

That depends... how much milk did you give it?



mnem
OMG! My milk's 2 days past the expiry date!

 

Stumo.... Good score and fix!